Prince Charles and the Duchess visit the Dickens Museum in LondonAndrew Winning/AP

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Charles Dickens: forbade all pomp and show at his funeralRischgitz/Getty Images

Jack Malvern

Last updated at 3:34PM, February 7 2012

For an author avowedly opposed to pomp and show when it came to his own
funeral, Charles Dickens might have baulked at a memorial service featuring
a wreath-laying by the heir to the throne, a sermon by the Archbishop of
Canterbury and a reading by an actor on the Hollywood A-list.

But 200 years after his birth, and almost 142 years after his body was lowered
into the ground in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey, his attitude might
have softened. And besides he had no choice.

The Prince of Wales, accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall, attended a
service at